The Securities and Exchange Commission filed charges against eight more people Thursday, accusing them of netting illegal profits in an inside-trading scheme involving Reebok (RBK). The accused include a former broker from New Jersey who is the nephew of a Croatian woman the SEC charged two weeks ago at the start of the investigation.

According to the SEC, the nine defendants made more than $6 million in illegal profits after placing suspicious stock and options trades based on inside information in advance of the Aug. 3 announcement of Adidas' all-cash purchase of Reebok. Shares of Reebok jumped more than 30% on the news.

After scrutinizing activity in nine brokerage accounts based in the USA and overseas and combing through phone records, the SEC says it was able to link all the defendants, who resided in the USA, Germany and Croatia. The four U.S.-based accounts were set up at CyberTrader, Ameritrade, OptionsXpress and Charles Schwab.

"All the defendants appear to have acted in concert," says the SEC's David Rosenfeld. He says the investigation is ongoing.

The SEC alleges that David Pajcin, 28, of Clifton, N.J., the nephew of Sonja Anticevic of Croatia, placed or directed some of the trades and tipped off others. Also charged: Monika Vujovic, 23, of New York; Elvis Santana, 23, of Brooklyn, N.Y.; Henry Siegel, 55, of Pomona, N.Y. In addition to Anticevic, non-U.S. residents charged included: Zoran Sormaz, 40, of Croatia; Perica Lopandic, 38, of Germany; and Ilija Borac, 50, of Croatia.

The final defendant was a "certain unknown person."

Lawyers representing Siegel, Vujovic and Santana had no comment in court, Reuters reported.

The largest ill-gotten gains, according to the SEC, involved the U.S.-based purchase of call options, which are bets on rising prices. The four domestic accounts, which netted $4 million in profit, accounted for 78% of the total call option activity on Aug. 1 and Aug. 2. On Aug. 4, USA TODAY was the first to report the suspicious trading.